


silver linings

by ambassador319 (orphan_account)



Category: Dare Me (TV 2019), Dare Me - Megan Abbott
Genre: F/F, and started this, here you go dare me fandom, here's to hoping we get picked up by netflix, i literally saw it on twitter and went fuck it, idk what i'm doing but i want a season 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-01
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:07:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23908207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ambassador319
Summary: the day after the end of season 1. from both Addy and Beth's perspectives.
Relationships: Beth Cassidy/Addy Hanlon
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35





	silver linings

The thing about cheer is it gets in you.

You know how, when you were younger— when your dad left town— you dreamed of being a basketballer, or a hockey player, you wanted to run and hit things, and live in that swoop and connection, the suddenness, the glory: not like that. Cheer is the stuff you don't wanna do. 5am. The dark. The cold. Cheer is morning-stink fluorescent-glare cold fingernails of sweat in your hair, dragging, and it is getting you stronger. Harder. It is getting you to who you're meant to be. 

And it's important. Don't say it isn't. 

The morning after the football game Addy wakes up at 5am. How she's been trained to. Because cheer gets in you. And there she is, not even seventeen years old, curled tight beneath sheets, she slipped in the window after Coach's house and the soles of her shoes stain the windowsill. She is still in her uniform. Hair frizzed from the rain. But she blinks at the ceiling and already her body's awake, it's living, flying, and she's ready. It's a moment before she remembers what she's ready for. 

_Stay strong. Fight 'till the end._

Warpaint gritty on her cheeks, she stands. Mom's asleep, right? The whisper of the carpet's like a death toll. Loud, ringing. Addy cracks open the door and— shit, the hallway light. She edges by. Her bleary heart thrums in her chest. It's never been clearer to Addy what her mom is. And what she is. There's a gun in a locker in the kitchen and Addy was never afraid of it until she saw Will's face, the blown teeth, dead-fish eyes, the blood. 

She won't think about him. She's half-asleep, still. It's unfair. 

Addy doesn't turn on the bathroom light but scrubs her face in the dimness. Bits of herself stare out from the mirror, the mirror that looks more oil than glass, shimmering, and she doesn't look up. She buries her face in the towel. _Stay strong._ The waking up is wearing off and Addy needs it to stay; she needs her routine, her 5am bleariness, her cheer schedule written in her blood like always. _Fight._ Is her phone charged? Does she want it to be charged or not? Hunger gnaws at her stomach and she creeps out, the uniform skirt warm and rain-sticky, sweat-sticky, clinging to her creeping. 

The phone is charged. No texts from Colette. Or— she shuts the thought down. 

There are clothes folded on her desk. She changes. Phone light filters in everywhere like a ghost and she turns it off, dresses quickly, quietly, the cheer uniform sliding to the floor like the skin of a dead thing. Clean clothes feel weird. Off. Like she doesn't deserve them. Addy's bag is still packed from yesterday where she left it before— before, and she swings it onto a shoulder and closes the bedroom door behind her, failing to notice the wardrobe with the bleached shoes gaping open as she goes, its empty maw wide and hungry. 

Mom is asleep on the kitchen counter. Addy pauses for reasons she can't explain. There's a twinge in her chest. Her Mom's in uniform like Addy was, her head on her arms against the fake marble, and she looks crumpled, and old, as though struck down from a great height by something taller, something stronger. 

Easing the doorknob open, Addy flees. 

The streets are as she left them; black and blue. Glossy and scaled and beaten. Addy breathes the cool air and pushes down her tiredness, down with the trickle of rain in the drains, and spies a hint of purple between houses: dawn coming. The dawn would be here soon. She digs her headphones from her bag and plugs them to her phone, ignoring the blank screen. Some _Post Malone_ song. Good. She needs the lift of it, the bite, the strength, the will. Slamming up the volume, Addy tugs her bag tight and starts off to school.

Sutton Grove High School comes into view before the sun breaks the horizon. Looming and livid, a wild thing. Addy hums to her music and thinks of cheer, of the waking up, that she needs to train and do better. And get out of here. She'll train today.

The janitor hasn't unlocked anything yet but the old one let the team in on loopholes years ago, when Riri had grown three cup sizes over summer and flirted with everything that moved. Addy throws her bag over the fence and climbs over, the toes of her shoes sticking in the wire, metal icy against her palms. The sunrise is a fire on the horizon now and she sees the smoke, the flames, coming up hot and blinding. It's beautiful, and it gets in her hair, her skin. Stupid. She wishes it burned, that she burned. Right down to nothing. Dew on grass. 

Over the weird stile-thing and through the faulty door. She's in. Her footsteps echo in the long hallways and Addy wishes the team were here, too, beside her, racing and calling, slamming the walls as they passed. Slapping the roof. She wishes Riri was struggling to tie up her hair and Cori and Brianna were fighting over a thermos of coffee. She wishes Beth—

She doesn't wish anything. 

English, Maths, Science. History. P.E. She reaches the locker room and peers through the thin film of window in door, looking for anyone, listening. Usually only the cheer girls are so early but you never know. Sometimes the rowing girls are at it by 4. Once the boys' football team had dared step in and the ceiling was wadded with toilet paper.

Nobody. Addy slips in, quiet as a shadow. 

The linoleum floors are cold and scattered with glitter. Ribbons, scrunchies. Abandoned girlness. Addy scrunches her nose against the stench— is that Tacy's deodorant? Her usual locker is twisted messily into its lock, her spare gym gear peeking out from the crack, neon pink against metal. She opens it and the sound screeches. Good thing nobody's here. Nobody is here in this entire school to hear it. Addy switches her shirt and slumps against the wall, a certain, weird calmness settling in, a feeling like nothing matters.

She thinks it comes with the light. It always does. In the dark and the cold and the 5am, every cheer training, the light comes. In the corner of the gym window and, like now, streaming through the shutters of the locker room. Falls through empty space like gold dust. Spinning to the floor. Back in JV squad Addy would use it as a clock, her flappy arms quivering. She'd collapse to the mat and take a precious two seconds to swim in that light, drown in it. It meant: _not much more_. _Not much longer._ Since those JV days she doesn't notice— or collects the light as earned truth, proof she's getting stronger— but right now Addy falls back into it, that comfort. She closes her eyes and lifts her chin. Imagines she can feel it breathing against her, brushing down her skin. _Not much more. Not much longer._

The room is still frigid with morning. Sunlight only does so much. Addy has no jacket in her locker, but luckily, there's a squad hoodie tossed on the bench: someone must have left it before the game. She goes to shrug it on. Stops. 

Doesn't smell Tacy's deodorant anymore. Smells something else. 

Smoke, sweat, and greenness. The green of road trips and daybreak. Lanvers Peak. Pine needles. Storms. 

This is Beth's hoodie. 

Addy's worn it before, too many times— it might even have been hers at some point— but she rips it off, goosebumps carving back into her skin. The hoodie is balled up and thrown to the other side of the locker room. It snags on another bench, hangs, a stupid collapsing wreck of blood-colour and printed squad-pride. 

Repacking her bag, Addy flees from the room. But the smell goes with her. 

The thing about Beth is that she infects you, like a chemical leak. Addy nearly runs down the hall, schoolbag slapping, but it's in her. It's still in her. She's like the guy in the video Ms Fink showed them last week, the YouTuber who took his camera to Chernobyl, and after his ten-minute blue-gloved scrabble in the dirt Ms Fink told everyone in the class to watch closer for signs of change, for a hunch in his shoulders, rattle in his breath, because nobody goes to the heart of that place without leaving with a piece of it in them.

She reaches the gymnasium. Fights with her mind, struggles with it. She's just the Chernobyl guy, that's it. Everything about Beth— every time she's around you get a frenzy in you, some of her crazy. Everyone knows it. Addy spent half her life with Beth's crazy and sometimes it comes up in her even when she's alone. She'd never thought about it before. 

She's thinking about it now.

No! She isn't. 

The gym is scratched up and beaten and filled with light and Addy drops her bag, drops into crunches, knees pulling to her chest. One, two, three, four. Her panic eases. Into something keener, cleaner. Like the side of a knife. One, two. Now the rest. 

Once she's done with practice, she'll check her phone. 

Addy swears that to herself.

She'll check her phone. 

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment and tell me what you want in season 2 xx


End file.
